A Popular Schoolgirl by Angela Brazil (primary phonics txt) 📗
- Author: Angela Brazil
Book online «A Popular Schoolgirl by Angela Brazil (primary phonics txt) 📗». Author Angela Brazil
One day Miss Burd announced that on the following Saturday there was to be a match played in a suburb of Grovebury between two first-class ladies' hockey clubs. She suggested that it might be of advantage to some of the girls to go and watch it, and proposed that each of the upper forms should elect one of their number as special reporter to write an account of the match which could be read aloud afterwards in school. The idea rather struck them.
"It's Finbury Wanderers versus Hilton," said Linda Slater, "and they're both jolly good, I know. Wish I could have gone myself, but I'm booked already for Saturday."
"Heaps of us are," said Cicely Denham.
"We'd like to hear about it, though," added Kitty Saunders. "I call it rather a brain wave to choose a reporter."
"Hands up any girls who are free on Saturday!" called Beatrice Jackson.
The announcement had been made rather late, so most of the form already had engagements for the holiday. Only six hands were raised, belonging respectively to Ingred Saxon, Avie Irving, Avis Marlowe, Francie Hall, Bess Haselford, and Beatrice Jackson herself.
"A poor muster for Va!" remarked Kitty. "As Ingred's our warden, I should think she'd better write the report."
"The Finbury ground is a horribly awkward place to get to," put in Beatrice. "I suppose you'll motor there, Ingred."
"We have no car now," confessed Ingred, turning very red, for she was sure that Beatrice knew that fact only too well, and had brought it into prominence on purpose to humiliate her.
"Oh! I suppose you'll be motoring, Bess? Couldn't you give some of us a lift?"
"I believe I could take you all," replied Bess pleasantly. "Of course I shall have to ask Dad first if I may have the car out on Saturday, but I don't expect he'll say no."
"Oh, what sport! We'll come, you bet. Look here, I beg to propose that Bess Haselford writes the report of the match."
"And I second it," declared Francie. "Hands up, girls! Bess shall be 'boss' for this show."
Half the girls in the room had not heard Kitty's proposal that Ingred should be chosen, and some of the others, listening imperfectly, had gathered that she was not able to go to the match, so without giving her a further thought they raised hands in favor of Bess, and the matter was carried.
"But indeed I'm no good at writing or describing things!" protested Bess.
"Yes, you are! You've got to try, so there!" cried her friends triumphantly. "You'll do it just as well as anybody else would."
Ingred turned away with a red-hot spot raging under her blouse. That she, the warden of the form, should have been passed over in favor of a girl whose sole qualification seemed to be that she could offer some of the others a lift in her car, was a very nasty knock. Was Bess to supplant her in everything?
"Perhaps you'd like to make her warden instead of me!" she remarked bitterly to Belle Charlton, who stood near. "I'm perfectly willing to resign if you're tired of me!"
Belle only giggled and poked Joanna Powers, who said:
"Don't be nasty, Ingred! Bess is a sport, and we most of us like her."
"I can't see the attraction myself!" snapped Ingred.
She did not want to go to the hockey match now, and made up her mind obstinately that nothing in this wide world should decoy her to it. Bess came to school next morning armed with full permission to use her father's car and to invite as many of her schoolfellows as it would accommodate. She cordially pressed Ingred to join the party.
"I'm not going to the match, thanks," replied the latter frigidly.
"But there's heaps of room—there is indeed, without a frightful squash."
"There's something I want to do at home on Saturday."
"Couldn't you do it in the morning? The form will be disappointed if you don't go—and, I say——" (shyly) "I wish you'd write that wretched report instead of me. I hate the idea of doing it!"
"The form won't care twopence whether I go or stay away, and as they've chosen you to write the report you'll have to write it or it'll be left undone," retorted Ingred perversely.
Bess, looking decidedly hurt, turned away. Her little efforts at friendship with Ingred were invariably met in this most ungracious fashion. She could not understand why her kindly-meant advances should always be so systematically repulsed. Ingred, on her part, stalked off with the mean feeling of one who at bottom knows she is in the wrong, but won't acknowledge it even to herself. Under the sub-current of indignation she realized that she would have liked Bess immensely if only the latter had not taken up her residence at Rotherwood. That, however, was an offense which she deemed it quite impossible ever to forgive.
Ingred went about her work that morning in a very scratchy mood, so much so as to attract the attention of Miss Strong, who possibly felt a little prickly herself, since even teachers have their phases of temper. It was at that time a fashion in the form for the girls to keep all sorts of absurd mascots inside their desks, the collecting and comparison of which afforded them huge satisfaction. Now Miss Strong happened to be lecturing on "The Age of Elizabeth," a subject so congenial to her that she was generally most interesting. But to-day she had reached a rather dry and arid portion of that famous reign, and even her powers of description failed for once and the lesson became a mere catalogue of events and dates. Ingred, bored stiff with listening, secretly opened her desk, and, taking a selection of treasures from it, began to fondle them surreptitiously upon her lap. It was, of course, a quite illegal thing to do. She glanced at them occasionally, but for the most part kept her eyes upon her teacher. Beatrice, however, who sat near and had an excellent view of Ingred's lap, gazed at it with such persistent and marked attention that she attracted the notice of Miss Strong, who followed the direction of her looks and pounced upon the offender.
"Ingred Saxon, what have you there? Bring those things to me immediately and put them on my desk!"
With a crimson face Ingred obeyed, and handed over into the teacher's custody:
Miss Strong smiled cynically.
"At fifteen years of age," she remarked, "I should have thought a girl would have advanced a little further than playthings of this description. The Kindergarten would evidently be a more fit form for you than Va! You lose five order marks."
Five order marks! Ingred gasped with amazed indignation. One at a time was the usual forfeit, but to lose five "at one fell swoop" seemed excessive, and would make a considerable difference to her weekly record. She blazed against the injustice. No girl in the form had ever had so severe punishment.
"Oh, Miss Strong!" she protested hotly. "Five! I haven't really done anything more than heaps of the others. It's not fair!"
Now if Ingred had really hoped to get her sentence remitted she could not have done a more absolutely suicidal thing. A mistress may overlook some faults, but she will not stand "cheek." The discipline of the form was at stake, and Miss Strong was not a mistress to be trifled with. Her little figure absolutely quivered with dignity, and though physically she was shorter than her pupil, morally she seemed to tower yards. She fixed her clear dark eyes in a kind of hypnotic stare on Ingred and remarked witheringly:
"That will do! I don't allow any girl to speak to me in this fashion! You'll take a cross for conduct as well as losing the five order marks. You may go to your seat now."
Ingred walked back to her desk covered with humiliation. To be publicly rebuked before the whole form was an unpleasant experience, particularly for a warden. Beatrice, Francie, and several others were holding up self-righteous noses, though their desks contained an equal assortment of mascots. Ingred, still seething, made little attempt to listen to the rest of the lecture, and was obliged to pass the questions which came to her afterwards on the subject-matter. She was heartily thankful when eleven o'clock brought the brief ten minutes "break."
"Well, you have been a lunatic this morning!" said Beatrice, passing her, biscuits in hand, in the cloak-room. "What possessed you to go and lose the tennis-court for the form?"
"If you hadn't stared so hard at me Miss Strong would never have noticed."
"Oh, of course! Throw the blame on somebody else! You're always the 'little white hen that never lays astray.'"
"Kitty and Evie and Belle and I had arranged a set!" grumbled Cicely Denham. "It's most unfair, this rule of punishing the whole form for what one girl does!"
"Go and tell Miss Burd so then!" flared Ingred. "It hasn't been very successful so far to tell teachers they're not fair, but you may have better luck than I had. She'll probably say: 'Oh, yes, Cicely dear, I'll rearrange the rules at once!' So like her, isn't it?"
"Now you're sark! Almost as sarky as the Snark herself!" commented Cicely, as Ingred, choking over a last biscuit, stumped away.
There is much written nowadays about the unconscious power of thought waves, and certainly one grumbler can often spread dissatisfaction through an entire community. Perhaps the black looks which Ingred encountered from the disappointed tennis-players in her form turned into naughty sprites who whispered treason in the ears of the juniors, or perhaps it was a mere coincidence that mutiny suddenly broke out in the Lower School. It began with a company of ten-year-olds who, with pencil boxes and drawing books, were being escorted by Althea Riley, one of the prefects, along the corridor to the studio. Hitherto, by dint of judicious curbing, they had always walked two and two in decent line and had refrained from prohibited conversation. To-day they surged upstairs in an unseemly rabble, chattering and talking like a flock of rooks or jackdaws at sunset. It was in vain that Althea tried to restore order, her efforts at discipline were simply scouted by the unruly mob, who rushed into the studio helter-skelter, took their places anyhow, and only controlled themselves at the entrance of Miss Godwin, the art mistress.
Althea, flushed, indignant, and most upset, sought her fellow-prefects.
"Shall I go and complain to Miss Burd?" she asked.
"Um—I don't think I should yet," said Lispeth a little doubtfully. "You see, Miss Burd has given us authority and she likes us to use it ourselves as much as we can, without appealing to her. Of course in any extremity she'll support us. I'll pin up a notice in the junior cloak-room and see what effect that has. It may settle them."
Lispeth stayed after four o'clock until the last coat and hat had disappeared from the hooks in the juniors' dressing-room. Then she pinned her ultimatum on their notice board:
"In consequence of the extremely bad behavior of certain girls on the stairs this afternoon, the prefects give notice that should any repetition of such conduct occur, the names of the offenders will be taken and they will be reported to Miss Burd for punishment."
"That ought to finish those kids!" she thought as she pushed in the drawing-pins.
There was more than the usual amount of buzzing conversation next morning as juvenile heads bumped each other in their efforts to read the notice. The result, however, was absolutely unprecedented in the annals of the school. It was the custom of the Sixth Form, and of many of the Fifth, to take their lunch and eat it quietly in the gymnasium. There was no hard and fast rule about this, but it was generally understood to be a privilege of the upper forms only, and intermediates and juniors were not supposed to intrude. To-day most of the elder girls were sitting in clumps at the far
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